Stephen Cornford - 'Two Works for Turntables' (Permanent)

Sound art, or music?  It's never a debate I cared to have, always subscribing to the Cagean view.  But in recent years, no doubt due to my engagement with bonafide "sound artists", I've started to make a distinction, which has something to do with listening vs. expression and the boundaries of such articulation - I'll figure it out later and you'll be the first to know.  Anyway, Stephen Cornford is very clearly in the sound art camp, as he produces works for galleries and exhibitions that are frequently built around the idea of rotation.  The turntable is a natural platform for this, and this 7" excerpts two of his pieces.  Unlike Marclay, Cornford is not using the turntable so much for its instrumental functionality as for it's structural - a motor, a rotating platter and a tone arm are the tools, and by implementing various other objects on the decks, these turntables become perpetual sound machines.  It's hard to gauge how much "playing" is going on here, or if these are really just recordings of installations.  Things change, so you certainly get a feeling that there are different objects being applied, but whether this is being done in situ or by mixing recordings together in post-processing, is uncertain.  You can read the list of sound-generating devices in the liner notes and get a sense of what this "sounds" like: springs, marbles, piano wire, horse hair, ceramic discs, gravel, etc.  I love artists who transform the domestic into something otherworldly - British sound artists like the Bohman Brothers seem especially adept at this, and Cornford's recordings really carry it.  What I could do without are the liner notes, written no doubt to explain this crazyness to the general public (the record was financed by the Arts Councils of England and Brighton, so clearly some sort of document was mandatory) by comparing it to hip-hop as well as the typical historical bit about Pierre Schaeffer.  But that aside, it's a lovely document even though I'm sure these works are best experienced in person.

Bent Leg Fatima - 'Mouse b/w Crow, Cat & Snake' (Lounge)

This two-song, 33rpm single is Bent Leg Fatima's vinyl debut (I guess), and a bit of fun if you haven't just listened to the LP, like I did. But, if you are going to distill a great LP into two of its best songs and put out a single before the album comes out, I guess these are two great choices. I can't tell how different these recordings or pressings are - I'd like to say that 'Mouse's organs have a bit more room to breathe here than on the LP, but I can't really say that with confidence. Things do crescendo here and the cymbals threaten to overwhelm, but the band holds tight and the poor mouse has nowhere else to go. 'Crow, Cat & Snake' mellows it out a bit, though you'd think those animals would be fighting each other like maniacs. It's a deep Philly groove, not an ass-shaker but a headscratcher. Though it falls into mellow indie-keyboard territory, I do like the way the bass guitar, electric guitar and keys fall in and out of phase with each other - its an old trick to kick some trippyness into 4/4, but it works well. (I'm not oblivious to the idea that these instruments represent the animals of the title, in which case guitar is crow). The URL printed on the sleeve (www.voicenet.com/~lounge) is long dead (2004, according to the Wayback machine at archive.org) and I think we can assume the same about Lounge Records. I couldn't find images for this or the LP online which might put this band at the perfect cusp of pre-Internet saturation (1997-98, the golden years, eh?).